The Diversity Issue

After a some comments I made on one of Mike Duran’s post, “Does Christian Fiction Have a Race Problem?”, I was set to write a lot of about the politicized nature of the modern diversity concept. Stefan Molyneux beat me and saved me some writing time, so I’d advise you to watch the video below. Perpare to be exasperated by the pace of the conversation—the caller makes some pretty poor arguments and Molyneux has to clear the brush to really get at what the guy is trying to say. This is the nature of call-in shows, but it can reveal some interesting results.

To summarize my thoughts, not Molyneux’s: what’s known as “diversity” today is a preference for a trait (more accurately, diversity is a meta-trait) of a collection of people. But the way it is treated now, this trait of diversity is also comes with a moral imperative component, which is to say that groups should be diverse. There are varying reasons for this moral component, all based, as far as I can see, in politics, particularly in the social engineering aspect of political thought. In this sense diversity lies at one of the end points of western sociological thought. As of yet, I have not heard of a convincing argument that makes the moral component more categorical than other moral principles. For me, it’s still stuck at the preference level.

Diversity, though, like a lot of western progressive concepts, really means diversity of a certain kind, and in certain circumstances. Molyneux shines the light on this fairly well on its contextual scope, early on in the video. I have no moral issue with people prefering a certain degree or type of diversity, since we all have a preference that shifts with circumstances and are set at a sub-rational, lizard brain level, to a barely rational level. I’d even go so far as to say people can openly communicate their preference for diversity for a group, even one of which they are not a part…though any group has the moral right to reject the preference wholesale with no reason given. Again, the moral imperative component does not exist for diversity.

Bottom line: diversity is a preference; everyone has a subconcious preference for diversity; there is no moral component for one’s diversity preference; any use of force (political or otherwise) to set the diversity of a group is categorically immoral.